


A Hope of Better Things to Come

by kriadydragon



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Male Friendship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriadydragon/pseuds/kriadydragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A What-if tale. Basically, what if Shaw had managed to hold onto Erik? Erik and Charles meet only days after Erik is freed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hope of Better Things to Come

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions of past torture but nothing explicit.

When Charles first met Erik, he had taken little into consideration beyond “he's like me. He's just like me.” Not exactly like Charles in the sense of having the same abilities, but still like Charles: another mutation, another step on the human evolutionary ladder. The excitement of it went beyond words and it was all Charles' mind could focus on. 

Charles wouldn't deny that he could be single minded at times. Admit to it out loud? Never, mostly because it wasn't something he thought about until Raven felt like happily pointing it out (which was as often as possible). When he had been accosted at the bar by a beyond gorgeous government agent asking for help, there had been clues – more than enough, Raven would later point out – that this might be one of those situations where Charles would be in over his head and not realize it until after he was floundering. The government agent, obviously, was clue number one. That she was asking to meet him at a psychiatric facility was another. That he was not to wear anything with metal or have any metal on him was another. 

All Charles had heard was “anomalous human” and “mutation.” He hadn't even considered what he might find when he stepped into the psychiatric facility. He did, at least, have enough presence of mind to notice that it was more a psychiatric wing of a multi-purpose building, one run by another agent – male, a little heavy-set and most definitely not gorgeous. To be honest, the man had said they'd never had a psychiatric wing until now. 

It was a small wing tucked away at the back, several rooms hastily reconstructed to accommodate some rather unhappy people. The room of the hour had taken the brunt of the renovations – not merely renovated but reconstructed; an entire room molded from everything and anything not metal. The table, chairs, bed tucked in the corner and all the parts holding the furniture together right down to the tiny screws – not a single bit of metal in sight. Most fascinating. There was a door, probably leading to a bathroom, and Charles' mind took a break from its ecstasy long enough to wonder what they had used for the piping and faucets. 

It was a brief thought. He was immediately distracted by the man sitting in the plastic chair at the plastic-looking table. Charle's first impression based on physicality alone was of a knife, all sharp edges and angles. But that was at ten feet of distance. At five feet of distance, he was more like a dulled knife, chipped around those same edges and a little rust-spotted. He was sitting slumped and shirtless, what Charles thought to be a lean physique in fact something more raw boned, not starved but most definitely hungry, hollow. There was lean, ropy muscle on the arms, on the chest, and the clear outline of ribs on his sides. 

He was scarred, too. Little knicks here and there, larger ropes of pale scar tissue peaking over his shoulders, numerous ones wrapped around the wrists. Those on the wrist looked a bit more fresh. 

Erik's posture was of a man bored with the promise of childish petulance as retribution for having to endure this interview. And it would have been ramarkably convincing had it not been for the shaking in his shoulders. He's cold was what everyone else was thinking, and in fact someone then ordered someone else to turn up the thermostat. 

He's scared, Charles knew. Because while Erik sat like a sulking teenager looking quite forward to being an ass, his eyes followed their every move, his mind taking in their every expression, every action and attempting to process the hostility levels of the people in the room. Odd. It seemed to be Charles he was most nervous about. 

“Herr doctor,” Erik said with a knife-like smile. An image flashed into Charles' mind – an older man, tall, lanky, German, offering a young boy chocolate, surrounded by darkness. 

The title was meant to be a joke – laughing at that darkness while wanting to hide from it. 

Erik wasn't just afraid, he was terrified. 

Charles' heart immediately broke for this man. Charles had been briefed on both Erik and how he came to grace this facility after coming to this place. The gorgeous agent, Moira, was looking for a man named Shaw. He was working for the Russians who had been funding his projects. It was through those funds that they had found one of his installations and a few of his “projects” along with it, Erik included.

Erik, who Moira and her team had thought a code name for something that had nothing to do with a flesh and blood man. Erik, who had been Shaw's pet project and yet who by all evidence had been left to die in a plastic cage. The moment they had released him from his cell, he had turned their guns on them without touching a single one. All he had wanted to do was leave, and might have if he hadn't passed out.

It wasn't that they needed Erik's help to find Shaw (Erik would have pointed him out gladly, with the condition that they torture Shaw once they found him). They just didn't know what to do with him.

Charles, still giddy at the sight of a fellow mutant sitting before him, made himself comfortable in the plastic chair and smiled. 

“Hello, Erik. My name is Charles Xavier. I'm here to help you.”

Charles' mind was immediately overrun, though overrun was putting it kindly. Assualted was a better term - thoughts of endless torture and hunger and pain, day in and day out tumbling like a maelstrom in Erik's fragile psyche. Of Shaw, not aging, presiding over all of it, trying to shape Erik, to control him and Erik fighting him every step of the way. Of a boy standing there, watching his mother get shot. Then it started all over again.

Charles said immediately, “I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help you.”

He said straight into Erik's mind, _I'm here to help you. Please, let me help you, Erik._

It did not go according to plan. More accurately, it did not go along with what Charles had hoped for, having come in thinking he wouldn't need a plan. He had hoped for an echo of his own joy, of someone once thought to be alone in the world overcome by the wonder that they were not. 

What Charles got was a wild animal leaping out of his seat and backing himself into a corner while shouting a string of profanities and paranoid accusations. 

Of course, in his exuberance, Charles had forgotten that Shaw was a mutant as well. 

Erik already knew he wasn't one of a kind. 

Erik, for all his terror, was a man who was orderly about his terror – fight first, then flight. As the guards closed in Erik grabbed his chair and brandished it, still screaming at everyone around him, maybe even at the world in general. It broke Charles' heart all over again, seeing this man as vulnerable as any man could get, cut off from his only means of defense and reliving what he had thought, had hoped, he'd escaped. Erik knew fighting back was futile, knew it but held onto it because it was all he had. 

And he would fight. Tooth and nail, he would fight – a knife dulled and rust-spotted but no less dangerous. Then protocol would be enacted and Erik strapped to a bed, back in his nightmare, waiting for pain and torment and...

Charles acted first and froze everyone around him but Erik. This time, Charles' hope was rewarded as the sudden lack of advancement threw Erik off. He stared at the human statues, wide-eyed as a spooked wolf, and Charles thought he could hear Erik's racing heart reverberate through his addled skull.

 _Erik_ , Charles thought. _Erik, calm your mind and listen. I am not Schmidt-- Shaw. They did not bring me here to perform tests on you they brought me here because I am like you and they wanted me to help you. You do not have to be afraid any more, Erik. You are not alone in this and I swear that I will do everything I can to make sure no more harm comes to you._

“Erik,” Charles said out loud. He got up slowly, moved just as slowly as one would approaching frightened animal toward Erik, his hands held out and his voice soft. Erik took a step back, visible ribs heaving and body shaking. 

“I'm here to help, Erik. That's all. But if you don't calm down they will have to drug you and restrain you and I don't want that any more than you.” Charles reached up tentatively until he was touching the chair. “I will not ask for your trust, Erik. I know that too many have asked for it already. What I ask is that you give me the chance to prove what I am promising.” He gripped the legs of the chair. “Please.”

Erik gradually let go. Charles set the chair aside. “Good. Now, stay behind me.”

Erik, dazed, shivering and only just getting his rapid breathing under control, could only nod. Charles placed himself in front of Erik, then released those in the room. Everyone stopped their advancement to blink dumbly at Charles suddenly standing in their way. Charles looked at each and every agent, and smiled.

“I do believe I can help.”

\-------------------------

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Raven asked. She was standing next to Charles, watching along with him as Erik wandered the foyer of the mansion like a cat recently brought home from the shelter. 

That had been the deal. If the CIA wanted Charles to take Erik off their hands while they concentrated on Shaw, then it was to be to Charles' specifications. The first: no housing him in a government run facility. There was a reason Erik had been diagnosed as an insomniac and the facility was it. Moira's higher-ups had been iffy, and still were to the point of assigning Moira to keep an eye on things (that is, keeping an eye on all the mutants, not just Erik). Her presence, and Charles' abilities, were the only reason they had allowed this.

That and Charles offering to help find more mutants to aid in taking on Shaw and his mutant entorage when the CIA found him. Charles was still on the fence about this “secret CIA mutant division” as Raven had called it. It didn't seem right to ask anyone to go up against a man like Shaw. Then he recalled Erik's memories, what Shaw had done, what he was still doing, and it was difficult to know what to think. Raven liked the idea, but mostly for the “secret CIA mutant division” part. 

When Erik had been told he was leaving the facility, he had been sixty parts suspicious, ten parts nervous, and nine parts so utterly wanting what he had hoped to be true – that he really was free of Shaw – that there was a heartbeat moment where Charles was sure Erik was going to cry. He had been more vulnerable in that moment than he had when about to attack the agents with a chair.

“Very,” Charles finally replied.

“Wouldn't a psychologist or whatever be better?” Raven said. “You said he was tortured, since he was a _kid_.” 

“I beleive I'm more than adequately equipped to help deal with the mental trauma, Raven.”

Raven shook her head. “You have no idea how arrogant you just sounded.” She gave him a narrow look. “You're not going to mess with his head until he's some bubbly brainwashed monkey or anything, are you?”

Charles chuckled. “Don't be ridiculous. Of course not.”

It was easy enough to say because the intent was sound. The idea of manipulating a mind until a new human being was created had, and still did, sit on Charles' stomach like rotten food. Not since that bully at Charles' prep school - the one who Charles' had tried to make kind, just enough to stop him from hurting others, and who years later Charles had learned committed suicide – had he attempted to so much as tweak another's thoughts toward his own will. Whether it had been Charles' unintentional doing or the troubles that had made the boy so mean that ended the boy's life, he didn't know and it didn't matter. He could manipulate short term in the moment – that never hurt anyone – but long term went beyond off limits. 

That didn't mean the temptation wasn't there. It often niggled at him whenever he came across an injured mind. With a mind like Erik's, a mind not merely hurt but even damaged, it whispered seductively. Charles could take that hurt away so easily, give Erik the courage to stand straight and confident instead of careful and skittish. Free him from the fear, the anger, the loss as to what to do now, having only known pain and torment for much of his life. 

It would be so easy. 

And could possibly kill him. 

When Erik was finished taking in the foyer with the air of a man ready to attack if the house plants so much as twitched, he relaxed a fraction as though he wasn't bothered at all and joined Charles and Raven.

“Charles, how did you survive?” he said, dry as the Sahara. Truth be told, Charles rather liked his sarcasm. He was very good at it. It was also Erik's form of control, the only control he ever had other than being a stubborn mule to Shaw's demands, and Charles had no desire to begrudge him that. 

Raven snorted, clearly amused, then slid her arm through Erik's like a good hostess. “Come on, time for the rest of the tour.”

Erik had taken to Raven surprisingly fast. But, then, Raven was neither a professor, a doctor, an agent nor anyone with a gun, so perhaps not all that surprising after all. She was just a kid, innocent but with a dry wit to match Erik's and the right amount of bubbly personality to be a declaration of “will not hurt you” on its own. Charles had been a little worried it might have been... more than that, but although Erik had found her stunning, most especially her true form, he truly seemed more smitten by the fact that here was someone different, someone not a professor, a doctor, an agent or someone with a gun.

Erik didn't trust her – he didn't trust anyone at this point – but he did feel almost comfortable around her. A rarity for Erik, and something he had no intentions of ruining in any way. 

As for Erik's regard of Charles, it was wary but not hostile. He wasn't happy about Charles' reading his mind and yet neither did he seem to hate it exactly, as though he couldn't decide if he wanted Charles to know what happened to him or not. It had helped, considerably, bringing Erik to a place that wasn't plastic or otherwise but filled to the brim with the means to defend himself. Erik wasn't sure what to think of it – except to think that either Charles was an idiot or an honest man, and hoping even more that it was the latter. 

It was this hope in Erik that Charles saw as the beginnings of improvement. Hope could be a wonderful or terrible thing. Terrible when it was nothing more than a longing never fulfilled, wonderful when it was fulfilled. 

Erik was just as tentative with his room and the rest of the mansion as he was with the foyer. Uncertainty was palpable in him and one didn't have to read minds to know it was there. He tried his best to look casual, unconcerned, bored even but there was so much caution in the way he regarded everything around him, as if certain it really was too good to be true. 

Once they had Erik settled with instructions to use the kitchen when ever he wished, it was well stocked, Charles went to the study to contact an old college friend who had gone on to be a top notch psychologist. 

Malcolm's first response when Charles had given him the gist of what Erik had gone through was, “Damn, Charles, are you sure you know what you're doing?”

“Sure enough,” Charles said with conviction. “He's... like me, Mal.”

Mal was one of the very privileged few to know of Charles' ability, a bit of an accident the result of having too much to drink and being startled by Mal's rather vivid thoughts concerning him and his girlfriend at the time. Mal had been more intrigued than startled, and had been instrumental in helping Charles see what else his abilities could do. 

“And I feel far more comfortable knowing he is in my care than the CIA's.”

“And you're that confident you can help him?” Charles could hear the hemming and hawing in every syallble, then heard Mal suck a skeptical breath through his teeth. “That he let you take him in is a good sign, I suppose. But I'm telling you, Charles, he's going to be a pain in the ass. If this guy's afraid then expect him to test the boundaries. He might try to push you, get you to react, see if you're true to your word that you're not going to hurt him.”

Charles' spine went rigid, his thoughts going to Raven. But years of presenting dissertations had given him an edge in verbal self control, and he said, sounding more academic than afraid, “He wouldn't hurt anyone to achieve this, would he?”

“No, no. It'll be more like, maybe, breaking a dish or sneaking off. He'll be like a teenager seeing what he can get away with. It might even involve verbal abuse. But the more you're able to gain his trust the less you'll have to put up with. Unless this guy has proven to be spontaneously violent I don't think you have much to worry about, just as long as he doesn't feel threatened.”

Charles thought back to Erik defending himself with the plastic chair and the reports of when he was found – the only two instances on record of any violence. The rest of the time, it had been stubborn insubordiantion where medical examinations and eating properly were concerned, with quite a bit of verbal abuse thrown in for good measure, and all put on record (for whatever reason it mattered. Erik wasn't a soldier, for goodness sake, he was a mentally and emotionally injured man). 

Erik wasn't remotely sweet-natured and loving. There was his obvious penchant for fight instead of flight, his controlled anger, as well as a marrow-deep hatred for Shaw. But Erik wasn't a man tortured into mindless terror, and he was well aware that to be cruel to avenge the cruelty done to him would only make him as bad as Shaw. He would shoot himself in the head before he was like Shaw. 

But there would be nightmares, Mal warned, and he suggested Charles use his ability to calm Erik before waking him. Charles made a careful mental note to warn Raven and Moira of this. Only Charles would be the one to wake Erik if he needed waking. 

When Charles finished talking with Mal, he went to check on Erik. He found him sitting ramrod straight on the edge of the bed, staring out the window. 

Erik's thoughts were oddly organized, emotions still that of a skittish animal but his mind diessecting his surroundings as a scientist would a frog, assessing each piece for hostility and calculating proper reactions should any hotility manifest. It was... quite remarkable for a man who not hours ago had expressed himself more like a raving lunatic. 

“What am I to you?” Erik asked without turning, sensing Charles enter the room (or the various metals on Charles' person). That was something else Erik was – remarkably blunt. He eventually turned enough of his raw-boned body to look at Charles, his face made twice as gaunt by afternoon shadows. 

“Why did you take me?”

Shaws' torture had done nothing to dim Erik's intelligence. In the hopes of creating a weapon, Shaw had cultivated it, and Erik had used it against his tormentor to the best of his ability. Shaw's other experiments had been his failed attempts at creating new mutants. Only Erik and Shaw had been the real things.

“What are you planning to do with me?”

Erik had managed to do what had seemed the impossible – piss Shaw off until Shaw had given up on him and left him to die. His perfect weapon put away to dull and rust.

“Nothing,” Charles said, leaning against the door frame.

“Am I free to leave, then?”

“If it were up to me, then yes, you could leave. But the CIA would prefer that you stayed.”

“Until when?”

They had already discussed this. The CIA said with their mouths that they wanted Erik to stick around for his own protection. Their minds said they wanted him to stick around long enough for them to know if he was a danger. 

“The CIA thinks you are dangerous,” Charles said. He wasn't going to patronize Erik. The man was a million miles away from being an idiot, and Charles was not going to treat him like one. 

“Of course no more dangerous than me,” Charles added with a shrug. “In fact I'm quite sure they're more afraid of me than they are of you. Bending metal is all fine and well but I might unearth all their naughty little secrets. In fact, I _believe_ three minds I happened to touch were thinking of their mistresses at the time.”

Charles smiled.

Erik smiled back, a little, and relaxed another fraction. 

“Besides, why would you want to leave? You live in a bloody mansion, now. Free room, free food, the CIA tracking down Shaw. What possible reason could you have to leave?”

Charles already knew the answer, but he wanted to let Erik have the chance to say it.

“Because I can,” Erik said. 

Charles pursed his lips and nodded. “You're on medication right now.” They had only found Erik five days ago, malnourished and sucked deep into a raging fever he was only now starting to get over. “The moment you're off, how about we slip away for a drink?”

Erik, in another heart-beat moment of vulnerability, looked at a loss. “I don't... drink.”

Because Shaw had wanted Erik's body untainted except for the chemicals he put into it. 

“A movie, then?”

Erik looked suddenly wistful. “A pizza. I've always wanted to try pizza.”

Charles beamed. “An excellent choice for tonight's dinner, then. Raven will be thrilled, she adores Pizza.”

For the second time in only minutes, Erik smiled. 

\---------------------

Pizza was a a bit of a hassle for a man under somewhat strict dietary requirements, as well as for those taking care of him. Charles had to consult the lengthy packet of intructions written by the physician who had attended Erik. Then Charles had to call said physician when the packet said nothing on pizza. Erik had been starved just long enough for his body to need a reintroduction to food – a very gradual reintroduction. Pizza was find as long as it was only one slice and had very little on it.

Pepperoni and plain cheese was the epitome of pizza torture to Raven – she liked hers slathered with toppings. To Erik, it was pure bliss.

\---------------------

Erik's first act of testing the boundaries after two days at the mansion was to declare his mind off-limits – he no longer wanted Charles inside his head. It was easy enough said and done when Erik was calm. When he wasn't – when he was having nightmares, or was assaulted by some previously unknown reminder (that is, unknown to Charles) of his former captivety, the surge of Erik's emotions made his thought impossible to ignore. Like a scream was what Charles like to compare it to – a sudden burst of sound, image and emotion you couldn't ignore if you wanted to, though Charles did try his best. 

“I'm surprised the CIA didn't have you shot the moment you revealed what you are,” Erik said during dinner – a dinner of soup to make up for the single slice of pizza the other day, as per the agreement with the physician. “Have you shot and not lose a wink of sleep over it. It would definitely save them the headache of knowing that there was a telepath lose in the world.”

Raven, of course, was appalled, and would have launched into a string of insults that would have made a sailor blush if Charles hadn't shaken his head at her. Erik wasn't being intentionally cruel. It was his honest way of being curious – curious while simultaneously pig-headed was what Charles could sense. He honestly wanted to know why Charles and Raven weren't dead yet, and to get a rise out of them. Charles may have stopped tapping into Erik's head but he still scanned his emotions. What use was bringing Erik into his home if he couldn't at least use some of his abilities to help him? It both gave Charles the immediate insights he needed to understand Erik and Erik the sense of control he so desperately wanted. 

“Well, if you must know,” said Charles, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “It's because a telepath is more useful to them alive than dead. Besides, what use is trying to kill someone who will know its coming before they have a chance to choose their method of assassination?”

It was the kind of truthful dark humor that always left Raven rolling her eyes and Moira a bit spluttery and quick to remind Charles of the promises made in exchange for all his help. For Erik, it was a reason to relax. Not let his guard down, definitely not hand his trust over on a silver platter, but small, gradual things; the things most people took for granted, such as the ability to smile, to laugh, and to enjoy dinner knowing that no retribution would follow. 

They were like stepping stones, these jabs of Erik's - painful in the moment but leading to something promising. 

Five days after coming to stay with Charles and Raven, Erik finally opened up to Moira. Maybe “opening up” was a bit hopeful – it wasn't for her sake that he was talking to her – but he acknowledged her whereas before he had taken great pains to pretend she wasn't among them. 

“What of the others?” he asked. Again it was at dinner, which seemed to be the only time Erik showed any interest in being the first to engage others in conversation. “The others who were found with me?”

There was a mix of hesitation and hope to his question, edged by a touch of dread. 

Charles had read the reports. Shaw had a plethora of victims to experiment on but Erik had been the only mutant. The others... from what Charles had read, Shaw had attempted to manipulate their DNA, to create what he felt to be the true higher race. He had, for the most part, failed. 

Moira, poor Moira, was at a loss for words. Charles didn't need to read her mind to know why.

“Some are... improving,” she said, trying desperately to give Erik something positive. 

“But not all,” Erik said.

Moira's lips pressed themselves together until they vanished. She shook her head.

Erik nodded his head as though resigned, understanding. Inside, his mind screamed.

\-----------------------

“Did you know any of them?” Charles asked Erik kindly.

They were in the study, he and Erik, playing chess. Erik was quite good at chess and it had a way of brightening his mood. He had played against Shaw, and one would think any game with Shaw tainted by foul memories but Erik had been so good he had beat Shaw on many occasions – much to Shaw's annoyance, and anything that had annoyed Shaw was a good thing. Even if the result had been those tests where Shaw caused Erik terrible pain. 

“Two of them,” Erik said. He move his bishop. “A young woman who I heard crying one night. Then a boy. I never actually met them, only talked to them through the wall.”

“Were they among those rescued?” Charles asked. He moved his knight.

“I don't know what happened to them,” Erik said. He moved his own knight. “But I remember the woman screaming.” He sat back. “Check.”

\-----------------

Erik's health for the next three weeks was a sporadic mess, compounded by his steel-trap resolve not to let anyone know when he wasn't feeling well. Illness had been used against him enough to make it something else to be wary of beyond health reasons; Charles had gleaned this from one of Erik's many fevered dreams. Shaw would let, even force, Erik to fall ill then provoke Erik into using his abilities – through anger, through fear, through any means possible though anger was the preferred trigger. Fear made Erik's powers erratic but anger made them powerful – difficult to control at times, but still a force to be reckoned with. 

Charles was rubbish at illness except to make sure Erik ate soup and took his vitamin C. Raven was no help whenever vomit was involved, or mucus, and Erik's sickenesses always seemed to involve one of the two. Congestion was Erik's archnemisis and he would sometimes cough until he could barely breathe, until his throat burned and his ribs ached so badly that he would try not to cough at all, and the congestion would get worse. Then he would react like an injured animal, hiding while he licked his wounds and suffered out of sight. And woe betide anyone who interrupted him, unless you were quick enough to duck the clock or lamp or whatever metal bit he aimed at you.

Ironically it was Moira who ended up being the best equipped to deal with a sick and recalcitrant Erik. She would go to him when he was so exhausted he could barely levitate so much as a coin, ply him with medication, guide him back to his room once medicated and barely able to discern reality, cover him with blankets then sit with and hum a gentle tune. She had quite a lovely voice when she thought no one was listening. Sometimes, if Erik was saturated with cold remedies and blisfully unaware, Moira would even go so far as to rub his back. If Erik was aware of this, then he and Moira were doing an excellent job at pretending it never happened right down to their thoughts. 

The only indication was Erik's exponential decrease of hostile feelings toward Moira. 

\-------------------------

Despite Erik's health issues – or perhaps in spite of them – Erik had a penchant for pushing his body to regain its strength. It was quite the battle. While he did what he could to increase his health his body seemed to retaliate by setting him back. It wasn't just the illnesses, it was the nightmares that woke him throughout the night, robbing him of sleep, or the loss of appetite that accomapnied both. What Erik refused Charles to see when he was awake Charles could not help seeing when Erik was asleep. The dreams screamed at him and they would not be ignored.

Charles' had talked a big game of aiding Erik where he could, thinking Erik's nightmares the best place to start. But... it was difficult. They were vivid to the point of echoing pains that shot through Charles' mind as though they were his own pains. He saw Erik strapped down and filled with chemicals, Erik strapped down and examined like a lab rat, beaten, cut, starved, derprived of various senses until he was either sobbing in a dark corner or lashing out in a storm of flying metal. 

It took every iota of concentration to ignore the images of agony and blood that filled his head and coax Erik's terrified mind away from all that horror, to focus on something lovely – something, anything. At times all Charles' could accomplish was to empty Erik's mind so that he dreamed of nothing. Charles had little to go on, but refused to break his promise to Erik that he would not enter his mind without permission. It was costing Charles sleep as well, and most nights Erik had to settle for something more drug induced. Which, of course, he hated, but Shaw had never used sleeping medication meant to relax on Erik – only sedatives that knocked him out cold – so it was a grudging acceptance. 

That was the trick to Erik, if one wanted to call it a trick. Whatever Shaw did, you didn't do, the only hard part picking out what Shaw had done. This took patience, time, a little coaxing but mostly keen observation. It was Raven who noticed that when Erik wasn't pushing his body he was lounging in front of the TV, flipping through channels but rarely ever settling on a show. When he did pick something, it was always a western, specifically Gunsmoke. 

“The first time I ever watched television,” Erik said, out of the blue, when Charles joined him. He must have heard Raven complaining about people hogging the television and driving her crazy with all the flipping. “It was one of these shows. I can't remember which. Schmidt was bringing me back from one of his... anyway, he recieved a call. He had me stand next to this room where the guards stayed. If I hadn't been so damn weak I might have escaped. Instead I stood there, watching TV for the first time in my life and thinking that if I could just slide one of the guns from the guards I could be like the man in the show. I could free everyone and be a hero. I could ride away so fast they would never catch me. I must have fallen asleep on my feet. I remember the gun in my hand, then I was moving again, but my hand was empty.”

For Erik's next nightmare, Charles eased an image into his head, of Erik fleeing the building where he'd been kept. A horse was waiting for him outside and Erik climbed on, rode away and kept riding. It was a small thing but it stayed with Erik for the rest of the night, and Charles was able to sleep. 

\-------------------

Finally word on Shaw's location, and Erik was too sick and too medicated to so much as react with a flicker of annoyance. Charles was asked to accompany the strike team about to take Shaw's location, Erik with him. It was a bad idea, and not just because Erik was sick. When coherent enough for the news to finally sink in, he was sick and angry and verging on something almost feral. For once, and only once, his sickness was a blessing, dampening down on what might have been full blown destruction. Instead, when Charles' was prevented from entering Shaw's mind and one of Shaw's people tried to ravage the strike team with twisters, Erik offered a much needed (if quite violent) destraction when he ripped the boat apart with its own anchor. 

The CIA wasn't too happy with that. But the strike team had been spared, they had to admit, and though they would never said it out loud they didn't care if Shaw was alive or dead so long as he was where he could do no nation any harm. 

All in all, it could have been worse. Erik was beyond infuriated that Shaw had gotten away, but it was tempered by the mild satisfaction of having destroyed Shaw's yacht. 

\-------------------

Charles wasn't quite sure how it was possible. Having been so close to catching Shaw, he supposed, but the man whose facility had housed Erik when he was found called them back in – all of them – and with great reluctance and much distrust, Erik actually agreed to go.

Charles also supposed it was because Erik was invited, not asked directly as though it were important for him and him alone to come. But, mostly, Erik was willing to put up with quite a lot where finding Shaw was concerned, and it wasn't as though the facility had given him reason to hate it. Distrust it immensely, yes, but distrust Erik knew how to deal with, and the building was a buffet of potential weapons for him.

They were introduced to Hank McCoy, and Charles swallowed his own foot on that one. Raven was right, he was a little too eager where meeting new mutations were concerned. It turned out all right, Hank rather pleased that he wasn't alone, Raven more than pleased with what he could do and a new friend was made. 

Erik gave Charles a withering look and a freely read thought, _You really can't help yourself, can you?_. Then tossed out an image of Charles drooling like an eager pup because someone had mentioned the word mutant. Erik could be a bit of a snot, sometimes. 

Although whether Erik's emotions had opened his mind or he wanted Charles to know what he felt when they were introduced to Cerebro, Charles couldn't quite say. All he could say was that Erik didn't like the thing, but was too wary, and even a little curious, to say anything. He most especially didn't like the contraption that went on Charles' head, and said so while circling him.

“What a lovely lab rat you make, Charles.”

Though touching the minds of and locating so many mutants was beyond exhilerating, for Erik it was a source of near anxiety.

“It could be used against us. If it fell into the hands of people like schmidt, or your government decides to use us as lab rats for their own designs...” Erik said as they sat in the facility's lounge, Charles recovering from the onslaught of so many mutant minds. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and a hot water bottle in the other against his neck to ease the muscles that had suffered from an uncomfortable amount of tension.

“Then they would have a war on their hands,” Charles said. “That many people with that many abilities, we would not stand for it.” He said it in part – mostly in part, to be exact – to offer something for Erik to mull over and sooth his mind. But there was truth to it. It would not happen right away but given time, were the government – any government – to attempt to corral those with the mutant gene, there would be an uprising. 

Which was why Charles had to grudgingly admit that Erik had a point. For all it's splendor Cerebro was, like any machine, a means for harm just as much as good. 

Then Erik asked with that vulnerable hope of his, “Were you able to locate Shaw?”

Charles looked at him apologetically. “I'm afraid not, and not for lack of trying. It's... like he's there, but his mind is invisible. I can sense him but no locate him. I believe, as they say, that he's onto us. Or me at least.”

Erik nodded, disappointed but not frustrated. Charles did not need to read his mind to know that though Erik didn't like Cerebro as a concept, he couldn't refute it's role in possibly finding Shaw. 

Since finding Shaw directly was, for now at least, out of the question they instead focused on amassing their own squadron of mutants to go up against Shaw's. Charles was stil unsure about this, still not wanting to put anyone in the line of fire that was Shaw and his mutants. But seeing as how the very world could be at stake, neither did he argue it. 

Erik was ecstatic. Shaw was everybody's enemy as far as he was concerned – human and mutant alike. 

As what seemed to be the growing tradition, conditions were made before Charles and Erik agreed to set out to recruit mutants – the first one being that Charles and Erik do the recruiting. The second that any who volunteered were under no obligation to stick around if they so chose. The third one more a reminder of various constitutional rights. 

Charles was so focused on ensuring these conditions that he had completely forgotten that this would be Erik's first time out in the world beyond the mansion and facility. 

It was... nerve-wracking, mostly for Charles, but also fascinating, and occasionally amusing.

“Erik, do you know what a strip club is? What it's for?”

“Yes, I know what a strip club is,” Erik snapped. “I read about them in a book, I can't remember which.” He kept his eyes anywhere there wasn't a half-dressed woman, and if he blushed any more he was going to pass out. He didn't relax until they were in the private cubicle and Erik got to show off his powers to a young woman with wings – he liked showing off. 

Erik saw his first movie in a theater, a John Wayne piece though not a western. Charles got a glimpse of what Erik must have been like as a child – easily amused and quick to find wonder in what others took for granted. 

Finding their little army meant a chance to go places and see more than merely a movie. Their search brough them to museums, aquariums, even the Grand Canyon at one point. And where it didn't bring them they went themselves, such as the Statue of Liberty. 

When it came to meeting with probable recruits Erik acted with the utmost professionalism. His duality _was_ one of the first things Charles had noted about him when they had first met – that is to say that what went on in his head was in complete contrast to his posture and bearing. Shaw had meant for Erik to be a weapon, after all, and a weapon was most effective when it could be concealed. Of course he would have been groomed as a man about town, and Charles knew from when he still had the chance to skim Erik's mind that lessons on etiquette had accompanied brutal beatings to provoke fear. He even chuckled over the way the rather volatile Canadian at the diner had told them to leave in not-so-very-polite terms. 

But when it wasn't about recruitment, during those quiet moments when they took the time to observe the fish at the aquariam, or took in the whole of New York from the crown of Lady Liberty, Charles was witness to more of the child that had vanished when Shaw had ripped Erik from the world he had known. The emotions, the thoughts that poured from Erik opened Charles' eyes to a world Charles had only thought he appreciated. His apprecation was a paltry thing compared to Erik's wonder, Erik's joy. It was as they traveled the country that Erik began the real journey toward true acceptance that he was finally free

Their travels came to an end with only four volunteers to show for it. That, to some, would be considered a failure and a waste of a trip. Charles didn't care what those some thought, it had been a journey more than worth it. 

\--------------------

Charles had known from the moment intel arrived on possible Shaw activity that bringing Erik along was a bad idea. The trip to find recruits hadn't lessened Erik's need to find Shaw but instead fueled it to the point of constant obsession rather than sporadic, as though Shaw's very existance threatened that wonderful world Erik had finally had the chance to see for himself. 

Being so close to Shaw – merely under the impression of being close – made Erik reckless. Which was something Charles should have realized the day Erik had demolished Shaw's yacht with its own anchor, but Charles had blamed it (or perhaps, had wanted to blame it) on Erik being ill at the time and not in his right mind. 

But the hard lessons tended to be much more... _creative_ than that. When healthy, Erik was still reckless but reckless like a fox in the henhouse with the farmer out of town. The path of destruction was less impressive but the quick, smooth effieciancy of execution hit Charles like a bucket of ice water. Erik dashed into the Russian villa with the speed and dexterity of a bloody cat and Charles was hardpressed to keep up with him, pausing only long enough to still those soldiers struggling against barbed wire. 

Charles arrived in time to put the Russian general or whatever his rank under and to help Erik subdue the blond woman with the crystal skin. 

Erik's interrogation methods were effective. Mostly they were terrifying, a painful revelation of the lines Erik was willing to cross when it came to Shaw. The hard lesson was that Erik was not the dulled and rusting knife Charles had thought him. Erik was still a weapon. He was still dangerous. 

But as Erik tightened the bars of the bedframe around the woman's throat, as Charles begged him to stop, a cracked flawed the crystal. The skin vanished. Erik stopped, then swept a hand at her carelessly.

“She's all yours.”

Charles wanted to think more on what he had just witnessed, but with the woman open for reading and time not necessarily on their side, he had no choice but to shift his focus. Now that the woman, Emma Frost, was mentally unprotected she seemed more than happy to show Charles what they needed to know – that is, what they needed to know concerning Shaw's plans, not Shaw's location. 

Then she looked at Erik and smiled. “You must be Erik. Shaw has told me _so much_ about you.”

Erik, leaning forward on the couch, a cracker in hand, tilted his head to the side wearing an expression like opague glass. The bed frame tightened around Emma's throat. Charles quickly sent a mental warning but recieved assurance immediately. This was meant only as a warning, a reminder of who was in control. 

With Emma bound (and fully dressed) on the truck, Charles kept his thoughts and his words to himself until they are safely on the plane and safely over Europe.

“Did you know?” Charles asked. “Not about what Shaw was planning, of course, but about... about his views? On humanity? On mutants?”

Erik, sitting next to him, nodded once. “Yes.” Then, after a beat of silence and nothing on a readable emotional level coming from Erik, “I would think his views obvious.” He looked at Charles. “I was the only real _mutant_ in his lab, remember?”

\---------------------

They came home to destruction, to Darwin dead, Angel having decided to cast her lot in with Shaw and his team, and cerebro demolished. Charles called an immediate halt to the endeavor, wanting the kids where they would be safe, where they wouldn't suffer the same fate as poor Darwin. 

Erik, on the otherhand, still as motivated as when they had recieved intel on Shaw, talked of revenge and seeking justice for the fallen. And, suddenly, Erik was no longer the only “charity case” (as he had often referred to himself) staying at the mansion. 

As time consuming as training their little army of naive mutant youths was, it wasn't enough to distract Charles from the niggling worry of what the potential confrontation with Shaw was doing to Erik. Charles had thought it a subtle affect but not so subtle that it went unnoticed.

“He's kind of giddy and it's kind of creepy,” Raven replied when Charles had asked her if she thought Erik was acting strangely. 

It was mostly creepy because Erik was actually interacting, on his own accord, and despite Raven having struck somewhat of a rapport with Erik not even Charles was used to this more open, even happy Erik. He helped with some of the training, even joined in on group training, and pushed Sean off the sattelite dish in good (if morbid) humor. 

And he was smiling more.

Which would have been all well and good, Erik actually happy the penultimate achievement. It was the source of his happiness that was the problem. 

He was happy because he thought that soon they were going to kill Shaw.

That Erik was so bloody giddy that he thought himself invincible made it all the more worse. The man wanted Charles to shoot him in the head, for goodness sake! But that it was Shaw's influence bleeding through was what made Charles sick. For all of Erik's pathelogical needs to break away from everything Shaw-related, the sad truth was that some things had been embedded too long and too deep to ever shed without costant conscious effort, the kind of effort that would wear a man down long before it accomplished anything. 

Erik still believed that anger was the key to his power.

Charles was more than glad to disagree. To prove it, he had Erik move the sattelite dish. Erik failed, no amount of fury enough to make that dish budge. 

“The place between rage and serenity,” was what Charles taught, a thin slip of a shadow over years of pain, anger and naive certainty. 

And when Charles put his fingers to his temple and asked, “May I?” For the first time since Erik had told Charles to stay out of his head, Erik opened his mind voluntarily. It was a reluctant, tentative, almost skittish allowance that caused Erik to physically flinch and Charles to pull back momentarily. But as soon as Charles found the perfect memory, of a mother, a child, a menorah and love, he pulled it to the surface and expanded it to fill every inch of Erik's shattered mind. 

Not since Charles had coaxed Erik's dreams toward something more pleasent had Erik been so relaxed, so at peace. When Erik moved the dish, he smiled his biggest smile, and the happiness Charles felt pouring from him was pure, untainted by thoughts of Shaw dead. 

This was the happiness Erik needed to strive for. And it was tempting, so terrifyingly tempting, to nudge his mind in that direction, to make him want that happiness more than Shaw's death. But as always, whenever Charles' need to fix things overpowered all else, he remembered Erik's nightmares, of being strapped down and at Shaw's mercy. Of being manipulated and molded against his will. As always, it smothered that temptation like an oxygen-deprived flame. 

Charles may not have liked it, but it was up to Erik and Erik alone to discover what true happiness was. 

\------------------

Erik killed Shaw, just like he wanted, just as he had planned and hoped for. Charles, still mostly reeling over having been in Shaw's mind and feeling what Shaw had felt - of seeing Erik through Shaw's eyes, the scared, skinny boy grown up into this serrated blade of a man – knew only disappointment.

What Charles' saw as he begged Erik to be the better man was the boy inside the man, with tears in his eyes and mourning in his heart. Then the coin went through Shaw's skull, Charles' skull, and all Charles could feel after the pain had passed was utter failure. 

Erik hadn't said anything to Shaw while Shaw was at his mercy. Not until Erik had lifted the coin, then threw the very words that Shaw, then Schmidt, had said to him the day they'd first met back in his tormentor's face. Charles knew it was the first time Shaw had ever felt fear. 

It was poetic justice but Charles could find no room to see this as anything more than Erik becoming what Shaw had intended him to be – a killer, a weapon, a sharpened knife at the throat.

Charles stepped outside the wreckage of the jet in time to hear Erik call a halt to the fighting, calling them all brothers, to see Erik lower Shaw's splayed body then himself to the ground. Charles met his gaze, but before he had a chance to read what it said, a new crisis distracted him. The missiles were being aimed at them. Charles warned Moira who ran back in and pleaded without success for the higher ups to call the attack off.

This will not end well, Charles thought when the missles were fired and a rain of destruction tore their way, and not becuase it meant their eminent death. 

Erik stopped the missiles in midflight, just as Charles knew he would. The missles hung there like morbid Christmas decorations, their rocket fuel burning up, the weapons waiting for new orders. 

Erik looked to Charles, but Erik's face registered nothing. Charels' face was begging.

“Please, Erik, don't do this. They're just following orders.”

“I've been at the mercy of men just following orders,” Erik said, his tone like a recording, like he was mulling over his own words, trying to understand what they meant. He then looked to the missiles hovering over them, the mutants he called brothers standing tensely behind him, the ship full of human lives out on the water, then back to the missiles. 

Erik sighed. “The hell with it all.”

The missiles fell from the sky, exploding harmlessly in the air or under the water. 

“We should leave,” Erik said. He turned to the others. “Shaw's dead. This is over. I suggest if you value your lives and future safety you keep it that way.” He was looking at Shaw's people when he said this. “I'm tired of this.”

Azazel took Shaw's people away and no one else. Charles and his people trudged inland, and between his abilities and Moira's connections they were able to take a plane from an airport and fly to the states without incident. Erik said nothing. He still had the helmet on and Charles wondered if it was because he'd forgotten about it or if he was not ready to take it off, not ready for Charles to glimpse what was boiling within his skull. The trip home was long and silent, mostly out of exhaustion, and in small part because no one knew what to say.

Erik did say, an hour away from land. “I'm tired, Charles.” He didn't say anything else.

\---------------------

Only when they were all back at the mansion did a fraction of the tension lift. The kids released their pent-up anxiety on a sigh, wanting to celebrate but their hearts not in it, their minds still stuck on the too-vivid image of missiles frozen high above them. They didn't know what to think so focused on the fact that they were still alive. They could be afraid of what it all meant, later.

Erik vanished to his room. Charles, despite his disappointment, was worried. He had seen Erik's physical state and some of what Erik had gone through after enough mirrors had been broken for Charles' mind to get through. They'd had no time to stop for medical attention and Erik had been keeping a hand to his ribs the entire time. 

Charles gave him a little time, assuming that, like the rest of them, he was cleaning up. But it was a short-lived reprieve, Charles' mind taunting him with thoughts of internal bleeding and Erik passed out on the floor. Because knowing Erik, he wasn't going to come to them about his injuries. 

Charles entered Erik's room when Erik sent him mental permission after three knocks. Erik was still in the process of cleaning up. He had put on sweatpants but not a shirt. He was standing sideways before the mirror, his arm raised for a better view of the spectacular splash of black, blue and red all over his body. His arm wasn't raised very far, but it was the waves of discomfort coming off of Erik that told Charles how much pain he was in. 

“You should get that looked at,” Charles said. At Erik's look of rather stubborn irritation, Charles amended with a smile. “Correction. You're going to get that looked at as soon as you've had something to eat.”

Erik looked away. Unfortunaltey for him, the mirror showed Charles his softened expression. Softened and vulnerable. Erik moved to the bed and sat down. He took the shirt lying there, struggled into it with hisses and winces, then stilled, his hands on either side of him gripping the edge of the bed. Charles moved into the room, to the end of the bed at Erik's side. Standing in front of Erik, towering over him, was something Shaw had done. Charles saw the helmet on the floor, discarded like something Erik had never really given a damn about. 

“I know you're not happy about what I did,” Erik said. 

“I'm not,” Charles said, neutral. “And I don't need to read your mind to know you're not happy, either.”

Erik shook his head. “It was never about finding happiness.”

“True. I _beleive_ it was about finding peace of mind, correct? And has it?”

Erik looked up. “What do you think?”

“If you're giving me permission to see for myself, don't. I would rather hear it.”

Erik stared out the large window across from his bed. The room was in the east wing, facing a green meadow surrounded by trees. The sky was clear, and just by looking it was apparent that it was going to be a warm, beautiful day.

“Yes,” Erik said. He sounded... content, like a man having struggled through the storm, bowed under the weight of a great burden, then coming out the other side, exhausted but satisfied that there was no more burden to carry. 

It was at that moment that Charles understood that this had never really been about revenge or justice. Not entirely. Maybe it had been at one point – for the death of his mother, for the torments of his mind and body, for the people tortured with him that he couldn't save. But then he was freed with the whole world laid out before him, to go where he wanted, to be what he wanted. To see and experience what he never had before.

And Shaw had been a threat to that.

Killing Shaw had been about so much. But mostly... mostly it had become the elimination of a threat; the end of a nightmare that had stretched beyond Erik's mind. 

Erik wasn't proud of what he had done, of becoming in that moment what Shaw had wanted him to be. But he had done what he felt he must: for what had been done, and for what could have been. 

“If we kept him alive,” Erik said. “He would have escaped. We weren't equipped to keep him. Not mutants, not humans, no one. He would have gotten away.”

Charles dipped his head, conceding the point. “You may be right. But that doesn't stop me from wishing there had been a better way.”

Erik's eyes remained fixed on the window and everything it could show him of the outside. “Do you think me a murderer, now?”

It was without hesitation that Charles' shook his head. “I think... I think you're a man still finding his way into the light after having lived in the dark for so long.”

Erik snorted. “Charles, how wonderfully poetic of you.”

“A bit much, yes,” Charles said with a wince. “But no less true. You've been running on instinct, Erik. Focused on survival. You've known pain, fear and anger and Shaw at the heart of it all. But he's gone, now. You're free. You can be whatever you wish.”

It was like watching rain melt away paint that had never dried. Erik's features shifted, filling with unadbridged uncertainty and that vulnerability that Erik had tried without success to hide. Charles felt as much as he saw the realization finally - _finally_ \- hit Erik.

Shaw was gone. Erik had done what he had planned since the day Shaw had put a bullet through his mother's head. The goal was reached, the nightmare over, and like all men who had accomplished their one soul desire, Erik had no idea what the hell was supposed to come next, and it scared him. 

“I was thinking,” Charles said, moving up to the bed and sitting beside Erik. “After what happened on the island and everything leading up to it, that things are going to change. We know there are others out there like us and they're going to need support, training. I was thinking of turning this place into a school. A school for those like us, to offer them someplace safe, where they can find support. But, seeing as how it will be a school for young people – most likely adolescents – I could use the help.”

Erik looked at him, wide eyed, and stated with the utmost disbelief that made him want to laugh, “You want _me_ to help you coddle large groups of teenagers coming into their powers and possibly rather emotional about it.”

“Actually, I thought I would do the coddling. You would scare the ones a little too eager to show off. You don't have to, of course. Merely a suggestion.”

Erik sighed then scrubbed his face. “Not like I have anything better to do, I suppose.”

“Oh, there's plenty to do. There's a whole world out there you haven't seen, yet, and I'm sure there are... matters of a personal nature you would like to take care of.” He was thinking or Erik's family, of course, dead but never forgotten, perhaps even remembered by those who had survived. “Helping me would be a place to start. Again, only a suggestion. If you wish to start elsewhere, I'd be happy to help.”

Erik's gaze returned to the window, still wide, still uncertain. “I...” A moment, then, slowly, he nodded. “I want to help.” He smiled, the uncertainty and vulnerability gone. “Dealing with mutant teenagers. You're probably going to need it.”

He was releived. He was content. 

He was happy.

Charles smiled back. “And I'm very glad to have it, my friend.”

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a what-if, my desire to whump a Micheal Fassbender character *dreamy sigh*, and [this picture](http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3100284160/tt0986233). 
> 
> I guess you could call this the "Erik the traumatized good-guy verse." If anyone would like to expand on any of the ideas presented, whether it's to add a missing scene or go a totally different direction - say, for example, make Erik a lone hunter of evil mutants who still drops by from time to time to play chess - please feel free. 
> 
> Finally, I had wanted to add the scene where Charles wipes most of Moira's memories but the story wouldn't have it. So let's just say it happened afterwards and Erik wasn't too happy about it yet he still refuses to admit out loud that he kind of liked having Moira around.


End file.
